Jan. 21, 2014

Supporters of Christie (shown above) are taking to social media to cite controversies centering on Democrats.

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@dracioppi

Gov. Chris Christie walks with President Barack Obama in Point Pleasant Beach in May. Obama's name has been drudged up in the Bridgegate scandal. / Press File Photos

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“But it’s totally predictable how the Republicans are responding. I think the Democrats would be doing the same thing. It’s classic crisis management,” said Michael Phillips-Anderson, assistant professor of communication at Monmouth University

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The George Washington Bridge scandal has bruised Gov. Chris Christie’s reputation as the everyman above partisan politics, could threaten his rumored presidential ambition and has led to the dismissal of some longtime members of his power circle.

Now others are coming under fire in the fiasco.

President Barack Obama. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-Monmouth. Sen. Bob Menendez. Even Christie’s predecessor, Jon Corzine, has been the target of Bridgegate barbs.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, though, none of these people had anything remotely to do with the September lane closures on the Fort Lee side of the bridge, believed to be a political payback plan that led to four days of traffic misery. Yet their names — all followed by big Ds — have emerged in recent days in story comment boards, on social media and in the vast universe of television punditry.

How?

Some Republicans and Christie supporters have “engaged in a clear attack of agenda-setting, because they want to shift the focus off Christie and off the bridge scandal,” said Michael Phillips-Anderson, assistant professor of communication at Monmouth University.

It’s a textbook tactic, he said, and it manifested shortly after the bridge scandal news broke last week. On one particular Asbury Park Press story, which laid out more details about the governor’s controversial “Stronger Than The Storm” ad campaign, several readers commented throughout the day on the story, but the thread morphed into a heated, sometimes vitriolic, debate over partisan politics and whether the media is properly doing its job as an objective watchdog.

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In a comment aimed at the article’s author, a commentor named Terry Riley, who declined to be interviewed, ran down a list of Obama administration controversies: “Did you question the contract bidding on Obamacare as much? How about stimulus advertising or even subsidies to Solyndra or Fisker, GM and the wall st. bailouts. This is strictly partisan politics at play, it aint rocket science,” Riley wrote. “In all honesty the only ones attracted to and buying this phony scandal are low info voters and Democrat supporters.”

Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said that “each of these things is unique in its own right,” and their level of attention by the public, government and media are hard to fairly compare.

“It would have been professional malpractice for a journalist to say, ‘Well, this is done all the time.’ Well, it’s not done all the time,” he said of the bridge scandal.

Still, there is a sense from the public that coverage is unfair and that, on a federal level, Democrats are let off the hook easier than Republicans, said Ken Ro, who posted several comments on the Press Facebook page last week saying that Obama should be investigated as thoroughly as Christie.

“I think people see a double standard in how a story is handled, in terms of how the bridge story is being handled,” Ro, 49, said in an interview. “People see this as a piling on going on.”

Phillips-Anderson said the rancor is hard to gauge. On one hand, it seems to reflect today’s hyperpartisanship. On the other, political debates, however pitched, are woven into the fabric of the nation.

“But it’s totally predictable how the Republicans are responding. I think the Democrats would be doing the same thing,” he said. “It’s classic crisis management.”